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MONTREAL - Here is the weekly roundup of Gazette staff and contributors' minireviews of new and recent music releases.

Lionel Richie

Tuskegee

Universal Music Nashville

No, not my first thought either – Lionel Richie in chaps. But he’s a country boy, from Tuskegee, Ala., and there’s a special kind of crazy in Nashvilling him up with duets. Question is: In attempting to set aside the familiarity of these supremely recognizable songs, can you hear them with new ears as country? Nope. Hello with Jennifer Nettles is huge good value, but Say You, Say Me is inescapably itself. My Love with Kenny Chesney, with its expansive airiness, is about as country as the Empire State Building; likewise Shania Twain in Endless Love. What we have here is a failure to reimagine. It doesn’t detract from the pleasure of Easy with Willie Nelson, but in the end, Lionel is his own worst enemy – these songs are just too global, a reminder of how huge he was.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Podworthy: Easy

Mark Lepage

Various Artists

The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond

Mercury/Universal

If music can telegraph the mood of a film – and along with selling tickets and building buzz, it should – then this adaptation of the teen/kids’ book shan’t be for the fainthearted. Enlisting the austere cool kids and the slick yet acclaimed hitmakers, producers aim for credibility, with the stable mainly hewing to stark neo-countryish singer-songwriter, with notable exceptions. Arcade Fire opens with a funeral-marching children’s choir piece called Abraham’s Daughter. The Decemberists rock out another drum march. Glen Hansard misses the tone entirely and blasts Take the Heartland in a genuine highlight. Otherwise, the Secret Sisters and Taylor Swift offer laments for the forlorn, braced by Kid Cudi’s throbbing The Ruler and the Killer. Miranda Lambert channels some Emmylou in Run Daddy Run. And at the end of the day, Swift’s anthem Eyes Open will be as huge as the movie. Which may be stark.

If you’re reading this review here, then Esperanza Spalding is the rarest of birds: a jazz musician with star power. That alone is something to applaud; add in her ’70s aesthetic, her alliance of sophistication with an almost childlike sunniness, and her galactic ambition, and you have sui generis. It’s there in opener Radio Song, with its showy melody line: she wants to be on the radio. Favouring high, nervously overworked melody lines at the outset, she’ll be up against the cement wall of playlists, but once she’s worked out the surplus energy, the album settles into itself. Then, you have the appeal of unquestioned natural musical gifts. Her cover of MJ’s I Can’t Help It is punchy and sinuous. Hold on Me rides its horns to the sun, and Vague Suspicions, when rhythm dissolves in a moody river beneath the pulse interchange between Spalding’s bass and Leo Genovese’s keys, could have been twice its length. If she lands a hit, the jazz ayatollahs should kiss her hem. 

Podworthy: Vague Suspicions

Mark Lepage

Esperanza Spalding performs June 29 at Metropolis, 59 Ste. Catherine St. E. Tickets cost $30 to $45. Call 514-790-1245 or order at www.admission.com.

Birdy

Birdy

Atlantic/Warner

Jasmine Van den Bogaerde does not possess the voice of a 15-year-old, which explains the 15-year-old’s success. The British teen has the stage name to suit her gift: a poised, swooping instrument that may be more awe-inspiring from a distance. Take a closer listen to the 10 covers (and one original) on her debut, and Birdy often appears to have a better understanding of her own undeniable talent than of her material. Almost everything is performed with the same semi-despairing, semi-uplifting throatiness, and whether she’s extracting the jitters out of Phoenix’s 1901 or approximating the majesty of Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal with an easy halo of reverb, everything sounds like the soundtrack to a climactic scene from Grey’s Anatomy. But there’s a reason why those scenes bring on a spine tingle.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Podworthy: Fire and Rain

Jordan Zivitz

Lost in the Trees

A Church That Fits Our Needs

Anti

Everything is golden in Ari Picker’s songs of grace, from the stately strings – used as a foundation, not as decoration – to the recurring imagery of golden armour, golden hands, golden wings. Picker’s words and his mournfully angelic vocals conjure safety, beauty and a not-so-distant sadness – and you realize why when you learn the stark photo on the album cover is of his mother, and that she took her life in 2009. Like the best eulogies, A Church That Fits Our Needs is both personal and universal, and is as concerned with perfect details as it is with profound revelations: Garden’s chamber-rock quake is a wonder to behold, but wouldn’t be as seismic if it weren’t for Neither Here Nor There’s twilit glow or This Dead Bird Is Beautiful’s pained acceptance.

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